Watch Editor

The night editor, television series was a television anthology that aired on Dupont television in 1954 the program host Hal Burdick each week he would introduce a different story, ranging from the Civil War to the present day (1950s). The format of the stories was either based on war some sort of action adventure with a hero needing to rescue a damsel in distress or find a lost treasure or some other harrowing adventure in other typical story for the series with a crime story with a private investigator (PI) trying to solve a case for a beautiful dame or a crime tale based around crops. Dealing with the exploits of famous mobsters sometimes the stories included a classic ghost story, and/or mystery to keep the viewers on the edge of their seats.

This television series was based on a radio program that ran weekly from 1934 to 1948 and was hosted by Hal Burdick, who would later host the television series. What made this radio program so unique was that Mr. Burdick would receive a letter from listeners in a letter to the editor style format sending in ideas and requests for stories to be heard on the program. They would then take those requests and make them into reality. This is the same style format, that they for the television show only this time. It involved far more screenwriters, and far fewer fan requests but as previously discussed the stories told on a television program vary from week to week depending on the mood of the writers the time of year. Halloween etc., or simply what they thought the viewers wanted the television series had 46 episodes in total, which are now stored in the Library of Congress archives.

The night editor also inspired a B-movie (1946) in which the editor of the Chicago star while playing poker with friends is recounting the tale of a murder that is going to appear in tomorrow's headlines the story is viewed through a series of flashbacks and conversations during the poker game as the players try and solve the case the story involves a police lieutenant. A cheating husband and a femme fatale is a classic tale of love mystery and murder. The interesting twist is that the cheating husband and his mistress with missing man bludgeoning someone to death, but cannot report the crime without revealing your secret to the place, which places them in quite a dilemma although the movie was set up to be a series of films based around this format with each film being a different type of tale similar to the radio program only one film was never made.

What makes this story so interesting is that the same concept went through three different forms of media for radio to television to movies and kept the same format intact. And both the television and radio series utilized the same host.